Make your own jigs...Video

[TubeDude]

Well, limited selection on WHAT I can do, but what I CAN do often works just out fine.  It'll sound like a brag, but I know I'm not the only one out there like this.  You with your lures and PVC work are a man after my own heart, I would think.  Don't get me wrong, I'd love to do it right, but I'm driving a $2000.00 car.  And, I have SOME tools and supplies, of course, but the idea is, what can I do in a way nobody has done it before, so I can do it with less.  I'm married, and I turned fifty this year, so you know where the money goes.

For instance, I can buy small tube jig heads, flatten them side to side with a hammer, and make pretty good minnow-imitating jigs.  I can make great wobble-jigs like yours by flattening them out laterally, using a bolt I have with a hole in the tip.  Just pound them out and paint them with dollar store nail polish. Not the best, I know, but I generally lose things before I use them up.  Beads, those little plastic stick-on gems for eyes, colored feathers, etc. all very cheap.  I buy fishing gear, of course, but I'm not buying anything I can make or modify. 

Since you asked, I do make very nice replicas of Paleo-European, African, and Native American bows, and sometimes kill an elk or deer with one. Usually costs me a trip to a vacant lot to cut a young elm sapling.  My alcohol-burning back-packing stove SMOKES anything on the market for boil times, cheapness, light weight, and efficiency.  I cast my own muzzleloader bullets and shotgun slugs in a home-made mold made from an all-tread connector.  I designed and make rattling spoons using cheap craft beads.  My version of "fligs" cost $2.00 worth of dollar store supplies for a lifetime.  I made an underwater camera for @ $15.00.  I designed several rod-holders, esp. some self-jigging versions that are simple, collapsible, and super-functional, mae from scraps. Several arrowheads. A wiggly fishing lure that uses balloons as a body.  A full-sized axe that takes down and fits in your pocket.  A belt knife that takes down, mounts to a branch, and doubles as a machete.
My backpacking tent is home-made, and I just made a collapsible wood stove that weighs 6 lbs for the larger tee-pee style tent I bought for snow camping.

I'm not saying it's the BEST way, but if the journey IS the destination, then even constantly looking for the nearly-impossible is fun, right?  My youngest has cerebral palsy, her sister is autistic, and they are the easiest of the four daughters I have.  So they get my money, but I have my fun.

Didn't mean to ruffle your feathers.  Believe me, I have made a loooooong journey myself.  First flies were tied out of my aunt's chicken feathers...with my mom's sewing thread.  First jigs were just split shot hammered onto a hook, etc.  Been there done that.  And before I got a wobble jig mold I hammered several different kinds of jigs flat...laterally and vertically.  I know what it's like to have to make do with less than I really want. 

I am properly grateful for the things I have achieved and the possessions I have accumulated over  a long life of often doing without.  Hang in there.